


A Tragedy in Three Acts

by Dandybear



Category: BioShock, BioShock Infinite
Genre: Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-28
Updated: 2014-03-28
Packaged: 2018-01-17 07:53:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1379815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dandybear/pseuds/Dandybear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Burial at Sea part 2.</p><p>The events ripple across time and space like after a stone has been dropped into a pond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tragedy in Three Acts

**Author's Note:**

> I am very upset and disappointed at part 2. Way to recycle a whole game by having Elizabeth Forrest Gump her way through it.
> 
> I'll stop writing about Booker and Anna cuddling when these games stop making me cry.

“People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.”   
― Lemony Snicket,  _The Grim Grotto_

 

"A Venn Diagram of people Elizabeth shouldn't try to be and Booker DeWitt is a circle."

\--Me

* * *

 

Annabelle “Elizabeth” Comstock dies a lonely and broken woman. She does not hear the footsteps that scare Sally away. She doesn’t feel the warm arms wrap around her, nor the hot tears that mix with her blood.

 

The Luteces, for once, are silent.

 

“Brother, what have we done?”

 

“What has been done and will always be done.”

 

The look Rosalind shoots him is wild and sad. She snarls, but breaks into a sob. She brings Elizabeth’s head closer to her nose and presses it to her hair.

 

“You’ve seen this happen before.”

 

“She was just as much ours as she was his.”

 

Robert falters and she hears him choke.

 

“Rosalind, I-- Let us return to Columbia. Be mortal again.”

 

“If we do that I can’t see them again.”

 

Her fingers are tangled in Elizabeth’s soaked blouse. The girl with the repaid debt is growing cold. She deserves a proper burial, not to be a looted corpse among Rapture’ masses.

 

“Come with me.” Rosalind’s voice leaves no room for argument.

 

She carries the tiny woman’s corpse past Fontaine’s goons and through Ryan’s security traps. Robert follows, silent.

 

A Big Daddy and his brood stop to let them past. It groans and reaches out to touch the blood spattered cheek of Elizabeth. Rosalind stiffens.

 

The girls begin to whimper, “Big sister.”

 

Rosalind sees behind another door that they too will become Big Sisters and be buried at sea. She swallows hard.

 

Not caring was so much easier when there was a goal to all the suffering.

 

There is no goal, only suffering. But, it was inevitable, nevertheless.

 

The doors to the Garden of Eden hiss open with the air lock. She lowers Elizabeth to lean against a tree and searches for a shovel. Robert opens a tear and grabs one instead.

 

The only sound is spades hitting dirt. This garden is so far the least disturbed part of Rapture.

 

“There’s a rose bush near that gate.” Robert clears his throat.

 

The hole is big enough now.

 

Rosalind dusts her hands on her jacket and bends to grab Elizabeth again.

 

“I’m very sorry.” She presses her lips to a cold forehead. The dried blood should stain her mouth, but it doesn’t. Nothing sticks.

 

Robert returns with a bouquet of fallen flowers and presses them to Elizabeth’s chest. He fixes a hair that’s fallen in front of her eye.

 

The dirt looks ugly against her white blouse. Both flinch as they bury her face.

 

Finally, all that’s left is a pad of disturbed earth.

 

“She gave up divinity. She gave up Paris to be like her father. A martyr.” She says.

 

“A fool.” He says.

 

“No gods or kings, only man.” Both say.

 

We’ll meet again, goes unsaid.

 

* * *

 

 

“Papa?”

 

Booker snorts and starts awake. He has paperwork stuck to his lip. If he peels it away it’ll probably take the skin with it.

 

“Whassa Sweetheart?” He slurs through a mouthful of wet paper.

 

Anna clutches the door frame and worries the pinkie on her right finger. She frowns a little as she tries to remember why she got up in search of her father.

 

“I missed you.”

 

Booker blinks away more sleep, “What time is it?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

He checks his pocket watch. Half past one. Christ, it’s late.

 

“I’m up and coming to bed, Sweetheart. I’ll be in in-a-minute.” The paper is finally damp enough to peel off.

 

She yelps and he must have taken off part of his mouth. He fumbles, but doesn’t feel anything. Instead he looks at Anna.

 

A stream of blood flows down her face and onto her nightgown. Her eyes are crossed and she’s breathing heavily.

 

When she speaks again her voice is deeper, raspy even.

 

“Booker?”

 

He feels something rush through him like adrenaline and inertia and a knife to the spine all at once.

 

“Anna?”

 

He drops to a crouch to inspect her bloody nose. She fists his shirt and drags him closer. Her eyes are clear now, clear and cold.

 

“Baby girl, are you okay?”

 

She sobs and buries her face into his chest. It’s his good waistcoat and blood is impossible to get out. He wraps his arms around her tiny frame.

 

“Hey, hey, you just had a nightmare okay?”

 

She’s clinging to him like if she lets go he’ll disappear.

 

“Anna, I’m right here. It’s okay.”

 

“I know.”

 

Booker notices the drastic moodswing, but doesn’t comment on it. Instead he takes Anna into the washroom and washes the blood off her face. The bleeding seems to have stopped. She coughs up a clot and it makes them both grimace. The stark puddles of blood on her white nightgown make her look like a stabbing victim. Booker notes that he’ll have to stop by the Salvation Army and pick her up some new pyjamas. For now, an old undershirt of his will have to do.

 

“Arms up.” He says.

 

He takes her nightgown and his waistcoat and soaks them in a tub full of water and peroxide. Anna shivers in the cooler undershirt.

 

“Go back to bed, Silly. I’ll be right in, I just need to wash my face.”

 

She seems to hesitate. She’s standing on the tips of her toes and leaning like a bird about to take flight.

 

Then she darts off in the direction of their shared bedroom.

 

Booker scrubs the blood off his nails and the ink off his face. He brushes his teeth, but doesn’t take the time to shower. Instead he changes into his pyjamas and pads down the hall to the ajar door.

 

Anna is curled against the headboard. She’s dwarfed against the larger mattress. She’s going to be a tiny adult, he just knows it.

 

( _How does he know that?_ )

 

He pulls back the covers quick enough to expose her toes. She shrieks and kicks at the air. He laughs and steps into the bed. Anna worms her way closer to him and pulls his arm over her like a blanket.

 

Booker turns the light off with a click of the lamp string.

 

It’s quiet for a minute, then Anna says,

 

“Booker, can you sing me a song?”

 

“Sure, Kiddo.”

 

He thinks for a moment before remembering a tune.

 

“ _See the pyramids along the Nile, watch the sunrise from a tropic isle_ …”

 

* * *

 

 

Sally sees Miss Elizabeth become an angel. For a moment she wants to take the light from her belly and drink it.

 

But the man and the woman come to fetch her and she sees that Elizabeth is a corpse, not an angel.

 

Sally isn’t very good at being a little sister. She shies away from Big Daddies and the memory of seeing that prototype impale Booker and Miss Elizabeth. She doesn’t like hiding in the vents anymore. Her pink skin is a patchwork of angry red splotches and white veins.

 

Then she meets Tenenbaum.

 

“What is wrong Little Darling?” She says.

 

Sally hiccups through the first verse of La Vie En Rose. It gives the good doctor pause.

 

“You can stay down here with me.”

 

She helps Tenenbaum by bringing toys and Adam to Jack. She calms the freed sisters when they realise they’ve been drinking blood and marrow out of their bottles.

 

And when the time comes she drives her needle into the face of Frank Fontaine again and again. She pushes it against his eye and into his brain. She wants him to feel it. This is her revenge.

 

Sally leaves Rapture. She and the other sisters grow. They grow and forget. Sally can’t forget. Her hands are patchwork and vein. She is the rise and fall of Rapture. She watches her sisters marry and move on. She watches Jack age and deteriorate rapidly.

 

When the men come to her door with a Cohen’s painting of Father and Daughter, she slams the door in their faces.

 

She wishes she could forget.

  



End file.
